So what about the Georgia Sports Blog's list? My list is based entirely on "Who would I want coaching one ball game?"

1. Steve Spurrier - He hasn't exactly worked miracles at South Carolina. Holtz won 6 games his last year, and Spurrier won 7 despite playing one more game. Spurrier landed a rare 8th win for the Gamecocks this year. BUT for one game...tell me you wouldn't want him coaching your guys.

"My ego is this big."

2. Nick Saban - His immediate and dominating rebuilding job at LSU was remarkable. At Bama, he won't have sole possession of the in state talent pool. Plus, the entire SEC is tougher now than it was from '00-'04. But he's a whale of a coach.

3. Mark Richt - 61 wins in six years. Two SEC titles and three SEC East Titles for Georgia after 20 years of wandering the wilderness. If the yardstick is "who would I want to coach one game?" Then I'm taking Richt over Meyer unless the other team is the Gators.

4. Urban Meyer - One great season in a BCS conference. The most penalized team in America. It's still awful early to proclaim him a sooper genius.

5. Tommy Tuberville - Twelve years in the SEC and only two seasons with more than 10 wins. However, his program is gaining momentum. Ideally, you play Auburn before noon central time. He's not an early riser.

6. Phil Fulmer - Almost 15 years at Tennessee and only two SEC titles and a national title to show for it. Plus, the longest drought without a BCS bid of any coach who's ever gone there before.

7. Les Miles - Greatest accomplishment at LSU would be holding the program together after Katrina last year. With the wealth of talent on hand when he arrived, what has he really done with it?

Hard to get past this ridiculous image

8. Rich Brooks - 2006 was a great turn around for the Wildcats. Does one year make up for the rest of his entire career?

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comments:

Anonymous
said...

My list is based entirely on "Who would I want coaching one ball game?"

By that standard, pretty good choices. Especially the top five. I think Brooks and Johnson are much better coaches than you give them credit for: it's true their teams haven't been that great, but when you think about what they have to work with, they do better work than, say, Miles and Nutt, respectively.

But I think a fan of a school doesn't want to win just one game. They want a program that they can be proud of year after year for winning and also for the legacy of the people who come out of the program. People who play professionally and also people who work professionally in business. By that standard, it's Richt and Saban in a tie for number one.

I get the feeling that LSU fans are quite content with Les Miles, and are more than happy to let everyone else think he's an idiot.

In his 2 years LSU has gone 22-4, with a conference record of 13-4. His first loss was pretty bad, letting an awful UT teams come from nowhere to pull out an overtime win. His next loss was to the buzzsaw known as D.J. Shockley's legacy. Let's not forget that those 2 losses bookended a brutal 11-week stretch w/o a break due to Hurricane Katrina.

Flash forward to 2006. One loss was on the home field of the national champion. The other was a controversial 3-pt. loss at Auburn. Had the refs in that game been competent, Miles is looking at 2 trips to the SECCG in his first 2 years.

Not enough? Miles' Tigers have destroyed Miami and Notre Dame in bowl games by 37 and 27 points.

For one game, the Rev Nutt has to be higher. His teams come out of nowhere about once or twice a year to destroy teams with far superior talent.

Les Miles has to be near or at the bottom for one game. Honeslty, going 11-2 with that talent (and THIRD in the SEC West) is not a great job.

Funny, I think 2 of the league's better coaches overall (Richt and Fulmer) are near the bottom of "one-game" coaches. Both have way too many games annually where their teams fail to show up, especially Richt considering his talent.

well, it's like this. i love peyton manning but until he wins the big one can't say he's better than tom brady! and i'm a huge manning fan! so uga, win the big one like those other have and i'll say he's better. but you can have all the stats in the world.

As far as Saban & Meyer's National Championships go, they were both 1 loss seasons. Richt had his own 1 loss season (in his 2nd year like Meyer), but that particular year both Ohio State and Miami went undefeated. UGA wasn't as lucky (and I do stress lucky) as LSU and Florida. They had the same in-season record and roughly the same in-season diffuculty of schedule. To have a National Championship is certainly quite a feat but to try to use it to prove coaching superiority over a program that had the same in-season performance and wasn't allowed to play the same national championship game is absurd.

no what is absurd is to place uga above florida in anything right now when it comes to football!!!!!!! forgive me if i'm wrong but both years uga won the sec they lost to florida???????????? if you were a florida fan cmr wouldn't be anywhere near above meyer! my god at least beat him before you place yourself above him!

Anonymous, I find your argument rather simplistic at its core . . . but you convinced me with your punctuation. I simply can't disagree with any statement that's backed up by that many exclamation points.

ohh i thought that maybe you couldn't disagree because of the 15-2 record that florida holds over your team over the past 17 years! isn't that close or worse than the vandy-tenn record over the past 17 years?

as for best 13-1 campaigns, I'd have to say LSU wins the race. That was one of the best football teams that I have ever seen. Weapons all over the field and a defense that overwhelmed.

UF this year had a great ballclub (admittedly they only looked superb in the MNC game) and UGA was very well balanced in 2002.

Thing about 2002 is that we really came on at the end of the year. The AU game was part luck, part deserved (like AU's win over us in '05) but GT and ARK were manhandled by the Dawgs. Honestly I think we had a chance at winning it all that year, but after looking at UF's offense this year, and LSU's total squad in 2003, I have to give them the nod over us in terms of quality.

Finishing the year at #3 in 02 was probably fair.

UF fans are right, we have to beat them before we can talk. It's NO DIFFERENT than Texas not being able to beat OK.

Lot of gripe from some obvious Florida fans completely ignoring the fact that you placed Steve freakin' Spurrier # 1, and then going on to talk about the 15-2 thing like Meyer won ten or so of those.

Right now, Ron Zook has just as many wins against the Dawgs, the Dawgs have just as many wins against Florida (as recorded history only begins in 1990, after all), as Meyer has against the Dawgs.

The question is an opinion, and an academic opinion as well. (it must be, for any Dawg fan to rank the Evil Visor # 1 at anything).

The list, though based on the one game hedge, also looks at the 'one big games' of the current crop of HC's in the SEC. Spurrier, Richt and Saban all have more material to work with than Meyer because they were all SEC coaches for longer than Meyer has been around the SEC.

Yes, Meyer has been a spectacular coach in many big games in the last two years. But so has Les Miles.

omg!!!! i like, think, this is dumb!!!! we all know myre is so cool!!!! we own you!!!! yeah!!!! i love playing my backup qb as a fullback!!!! one year of success means everythngi!!!!! mom i cant find my jean shorts!!!!!

omg!!!! i love using recently made irrelevant comparisons like manning being worse than brady!!!!wooooo!!!! i love waffles!!!! with syrup!!!! not maple syrup but cane syrup!!!!! i heart terry dean!!!!! and doug johnson!!!!! urbanetics by l ron myer!!!!